During the last couple of weeks, in response to a series of posts on the decline of scoring in college basketball and my attempt to trace the reasons for this disturbing trend by probing Austin Carr’s record-setting performance in the early 1970’s, several readers have requested information on the Stack or Isolation Offense. Over the weekend I was flattered to hear from basketball aficionado, Herb Welling.
Coach Welling, as you may know, has been called the “minister of information” in coaching circles and has been featured several times in the media, most prominently in Grant Wahl’s 2008 Sports Illustrated article on the evolution of the Dribble Drive Motion offense.
Herb first became acquainted with betterthanalayup.com when researching the matching zone defense and discovered my piece on coach Gene Sullivan’s strategy. In recent days we’ve shared several emails and phone calls, discussing the origins of Sullivan’s equally interesting Stack offense.
I promised him that I would provide a deeper dive into the subject and am pleased to offer it now in a “quick and dirty,” Q & A format. In the future I’ll post a more comprehensive and polished essay.
In the meantime, I hope this initial piece proves helpful and prompts further questions and commentary.
Click here to read Stack Offense Q & A
Mark Shaw Seeberg is a great historian and a great strategist. Seems to me a PG with Magic Johnson-type passing abilities teamed with a duo like Dekker (Wisconsin and now The Rockets) and Curry (Golden State) would rock the world. Two questions for Mark, Shaw Seeberg: 1) can you envision a 2015/2016 Div 1 or Pro Team using this system successfully. 2) can an upcoming essay hypothesize on how Gene Sullivan would add a wrinkle along the lines of “How To Adapt The Stack To Today’s World Of The Three-Point Shot”…. Essentially, a Drive, Penetrate, and KickOut series of maneuvers?
Will most certainly include answers to you questions about the Stack and the modern 3-point shot when I compose my “comprehensive” essay on the
offense. As I foreshadow at the end of the Q & A, the offense does not deny one from running schemes to generate 3-point attempts. There are many more alignments available that I did not describe in the Q & A that facilitate “the drive and pitch for the three” that you note in your comment. Also, note two of the alignments I did cover in the Q & A: “Open” and “Closed Out.” Both of these attack formations lend themselves to the 3-point shot. Thanks again for visiting the blog and taking the time to comment. Most appreciated!!